Why did we join the ICC in the first place?

THE government has decided that the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, has served its purpose after its request for the authorities in SA to arrest President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan was ignored.

Why did we support the ICC ’ s establishment and become a member in the first place? The US is not a member.

There is an SA judge who is a member of the Yugoslavia Tribunal at The Hague. His job, among others, is to prosecute the former leaders of Yugoslavia.

The ANC government is very shortsighted and naive when it comes to Yugoslavia. It was one of the countries, like India and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), that supported our freedom struggle with finance, training of our cadres and with international diplomatic support.

Yet we send a South African judge to prosecute the very leaders and our former comrades and sentence them to life and solitary confinement.

SA was uncomfortably moored in the backwater of the contemporary world during the apartheid and colonial period, but not any more. We need people with vision to lead our country and right the wrongs of the present and the past and not cause suffering and pain to our former allies. Sears Appalsamy, Netherlands